My parents have had this TV cabinet for... decades. Like, I'm pretty sure they might have had it when they lived in California, which is almost 30 years ago. It was a boring piece of furniture, and minimally functional as a TV stand. When we moved into the apartment it was in here with a TV on it, but we moved the TV and I put this thing over by the front door as a place to keep shoes and bins of scarves and mittens. It was still kind of ugly but at least it was more functional as an entryway piece. At first I thought about painting the top and bottom white, but then I decided to give it a midcentury-inspired refresh with some marble contact paper and tapered legs!
It was such an easy DIY, seriously under 30 minutes start to finish and was around $30-$40 all said and done. And you don't use much of the contact paper so you'll have a bunch left over for other fun projects!
What you'll need:
Marble Contact Paper
Tapered Furniture Legs (I used these ones)
Furniture Leg mounting bracket
Wood Stain/Poly (to stain the legs to match your bench)
First thing to do: apply the contact paper to the top and bottom "shelves." Where you start/finish the contact paper will depend on how your original piece is designed. This one was pretty easy, it had a very simple top that had defined edges, same with the bottom shelf where the shoes are sitting. I just left the upright sides original.
Peel the contact paper backing off as you go, making sure there are no bubbles. I wrapped the edges around the underside about an inch to secure it so it wouldn't peel up.
Pretty sexy! Now to get rid of those terrible black plastic wheels and replace them with chic tapered legs.
First, screw in the plates that you'll screw the legs into. This was super easy with a power drill, but you could manhandle it manually if you don't have a power drill (pro tip: buy your damn self a power drill. If you like doing projects around the house, even if you're renting, having one of these, even a cheap little one, is so helpful!).
You can paint/stain your legs to match your bench before or after you screw them in. I decided to do it after I screwed them in, while the whole thing was still upside down because then they were held in place upright and it made it easier for me to stain them. But you can do it before too, whatever you'd like.
Screw those bad boys in, flip her over, and you're done!
